By Tony Attwood …weeping children in replica shirts stumble about with their frightened parents looking for nonexistent transport, peering down side streets, plotting escape routes from the sudden spurts and burps of violence that flared again through the night. The Métro was running, but not the stop near the stadium, and without any guidance on …
Read More “The English media and government are directly responsible for the violence in Marseille”
By Tony Attwood Of course if you enjoy football on Sky, the BBC, ITV or BT Sprout you’ll disagree with my headline, but I do find broadcast media’s commentary on football – be it live matches or in discussions or reviews of games – completely unrelated to my experience of football as an actual spectator …
Read More “Why is football on TV and radio so patronising, ignorant and irrelevant, from the fans’ point of view?”
By Tony Attwood We live in a world of blame. And not just any old blame, but instant blame. Blame for the last minute of the last game. Blame for violence. Blame for the economy. Blame for the fact I sneezed just as I was going to start writing – it must be the fields …
Read More “The aftermath: England media blame the Russian media, Twitter blames Tottenham, I avoid the local police”
By Tony Attwood There is a lot of talk about what seems to be Vardy’s rejection of Arsenal. “Vardy ’80 per cent’ certain he will snub Arsenal” says the Independent. And to rub it in, “Arsenal transfer plans face disruption over Vardy delay” in another article in the same paper. Typical bloody Arsenal, …
Read More “Why is it that when Arsenal goes for a player something always goes wrong?”
By Tony Attwood If you occasionally read my ramblings on Untold you might know that I get just a little fed up with what journalists say about Arsenal, Arsenal management, Arsenal players, and Arsenal fans. Everyone can have an opinion of course, but when there is nothing but opinion and not a single back up …
Read More “Memo from editor: It’s the Euros. Make sure you knock Arsenal and its fans at every turn”
By Tony Attwood If you cast your mind back you may recall that before the “Wenger Out” and “Thanks for the memories but…” spell we had the “spend some fucking money” period. And it is clear that many people who comment on Arsenal’s finances, and do so with far more financial knowledge than I …
Read More “Accounting regulations make club finances hard to compare, but Arsenal are going in the right direction.”
ARSENAL vs. ASTON VILLA COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 38 DATE: 15th May 2016 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Mark Clattenburg 1st LINESMAN: John Brooks 2nd LINESMAN: Andy Halliday 4th OFFICIAL: Roger East First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 07:10 …
Read More “Ref Review : Arsenal – Aston Villa: did we see any change in referee approach in the last game of the season?”
By Tony Attwood I am not enough of a cultural expert to know if it happens in other countries, but it long struck me that in England one of our prime pastimes is that of sneering and laughing at others. We highlight their errors, and if they are not making errors we give them errors, …
Read More “Sex toy scandal dominates Euros along with a berserk Suárez, Arsenal transfers disrupted but MK signing, and the wrong hotel”
by Tony Attwood Normally speaking the World Anti-Doping Agency is considered to be the king-pins, the law makers, the absolute arbiters. They say a drug is a performance enhancer, and then it is. No argument, none of this “I just took it to relieve a headache and didn’t know” type of excuse. Take it and …
Read More “Right, let’s get the performance enhancers out. Its the Euro 2016 drugs fest and nothing is barred.”
By Walter Broeckx, Untold writer, TV show celebrety, TV series actor, president of Arsenal Belgium In an article to pass the time of the boring interlul between two seasons Blacksheep told about his own job and how it related to Arsenal. So I thought it might be a nice thing to tell how I spend my …
Read More “Arsenal buy a “spitsbroer*”.Walter and Arsenal Belgium reveal the latest transfer drama from behind the scenes”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Watching the responses of the bloggettas and the so-called professional journalists has been quite informative in the wake of the Vardy refusal to commit to Arsenal. In essence they divide into four camps… Camp 1: Here’s Caught Offside’s take which sums up this position – As if Jamie Vardy’s fence-riding the last few …
Read More “Apparently it wasn’t Vardy we were after at all. Here’s who we are actually getting…”
By Tony Attwood Now I want you to pay particular attention to this page because there will be a test at the end. My proposition is that it is never going to be possible to lift those people who are stuck in concrete thinking out of that position, without the media moving up a number of …
Read More “What we need is football Journalism 2.0, not football journalism 0.1 which is where we seem to be stuck.”
By Tony Attwood You might have expected the British media to have learned its lessons when it was caught out over the first round of American/Swiss arrests of Fifa executives. They covered the arrests of course, and allowed members of the FA and government to express horror and shock. But they never once posed the …
Read More “The latest Fifa corruption allegations, why tax payers money still funds Fifa, and why the British media is refusing to mention it.”
By Tony Attwood So, Vardy is another Higuain, the sort of transfer that everyone is so sure is on, that he actually signed a week ago, that it was kept secret, that he had a medical last weekend, but didn’t, that he was going to tell the club his decision on monday but didn’t. Either …
Read More “What we learned: Leicester can’t do sums, Vardy is getting a bit too big for his boots”
By Tony Attwood If you run a business and spend quite a bit of time dealing with other businesses, there is every chance that at some time or another you will have found yourself in an argument with an individual or a company that behaves utterly and totally unreasonably. They make a claim that is …
Read More “José Mourinho walks free from court as Chelsea apologise “unreservedly””
By Tony Attwood Of course you need a good goalscorer if you want to win the league. But do you need the best one there is? Having looked at whether changing the manager works, buying in big name players works, and whether injury levels affect the position in the table, I thought I’d see how …
Read More “Does having top league scorer help you win the league? Here’s the stats…”
By Tony Attwood In a widely reported recent interview, Arsenal’s CEO Ivan Gazidis said of Arsène Wengrer, “He has always put the long-term health of the club first. He wants to hand over a football club, whenever that it is, that is in great shape. He views that as a massively important part of his …
Read More “The Ivan Gazidis interview, what happens when a successful manager leaves, and do injuries determine success?”
MANCHESTER CITY vs. ARSENAL COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 37 DATE: 8th May 2016 VENUE: Etihad Stadium (Manchester, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Anthony Taylor 1st LINESMAN: Lee Betts 2nd LINESMAN: Stuart Burt 4th OFFICIAL: Mike Jones First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 02:09 Sergio …
Read More “Ref Review: Man City – Arsenal: A tale of Jekyll and Hyde”
AUTHORITARANISM……………Don McMahon Society needs authority, since without it, we have anarchy or worse still, madness and chaos that destroy all before it. That said, some forms of authoritarianism are worse than others. For example, the theocracy currently in vigour in Iran has limited the power of the average citizen significantly and is posited on the …
Read More “We are right, you are wrong; we know best, we cannot be challenged”
By Sir Hardly Anyone (in jovial mood and jaunty hat) A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go We’ll catch a fox and put him in a box And then we’ll let him go Isn’t it curious how quickly the mood can change! Now we live in a one issue world we can flip from …
Read More “Are Arsenal hunting Foxes? After Vardy there is another lined up. Tally ho!”
By Tony Attwood Among psychologists it is called Mathswash: the notion of presenting ideas and vague thoughts on what might happen, as if they were firm facts and evidence based predictions. No caveat, no suggestion this might be wrong – just here it is, it’s bleedin’ obvious. You know the style: If Mr Wenger continues …
Read More “How some Arsenal fans embraced the world of mathswash, plus witches, gin, imperialism and persecution of minorities”
by Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw Chief psychologist at the Institute of Certain Things, The University Hospital of the North Circular Road. I would like you to know that normally I don’t do sundays, but there have been so many calls on my time from members of the aaa utterly distraught that their banners and …
Read More “Arsenal 3 Scotland 0 and the big problem with signing Vardy that seems to be overlooked”
By Tony Attwood Copa America Centenario is what is happening in the US just at the moment, celebrating 100 years of CONMEBOL, the South American Football Federation, and of Copa América. It is being held outside South America for the first time – in the USA in fact, (in case you haven’t been following events) in agreement …
Read More “Ooooooooooooooooospina: its Copa America Centenario, and he’s done great”
By Tony Attwood [this story was updated on 9am, UK time, following publication an hour earlier] As you might have gathered, transfer rumours on this site are pretty much the province of Sir Hardly Anyone who just a couple of days back ran the story Unbelievable Transfer Shock; Arsenal sign £20m striker in secret. Here’s …
Read More “Blimey – the Vardy bid looks like it is true, and there is a release clause, and it wasn’t all made up”
By Tony Attwood According to Die Welt, Fifa is investigating claims that the new President of Fifa, a Mr Infantino, has been doing the rounds destroying recordings of a Fifa council meeting in Mexico. A Fifa spokesman pronounced to Sky Sports News: “We are not in a position to indicate if we have or have …
Read More “Infantino under suspicion of being Blatter II; Fifa under suspicion of being, well, Fifa.”
